More Metal

Gypsy Girl and Her Cat

I am so happy with the first few images I had printed on metal and I just ordered a set of 12x12 metal prints of these three shots of a Romani girl in Barzitsa, Bulgaria. This is a step up from the first set of eight 8x8 prints.
The labs that offer metal prints don't fully reveal the process, but it is a heat sublimation process in which the image is printed on a white substrate and the whole thing is fused into the aluminum plate, with a very durable overlaminate. I accept the claims that this creates a print as archival as good giclee and silver gelatin prints, with the usual caveat that art should never be exposed to direct sunlight. Some vendors say use window cleaner on the surface, though I'd probably stick with a damp microfiber cloth.

More Canon G10 Infrared (IR) Images

On a couple of puffy-cloud days this week I worked with the IR camera again. This time I used DXO Optics Pro to convert the raw files. Since it works based on profiles for specific camera/lens/focal length/ISO, many issues that might otherwise be bothersome are dispatched with ease.

This Coupeville house just looked interesting with the cloud behind it. I used the auto white balance setting provided by the camera, used DXO's ability to do film look emulations, then applied medium-high contrast. The B&W film look I chose for this was Ilford XP2.

For this image of the barn at Jenne Farm, I simply applied a curves adjustment, then in the HSL section (hue, saturation, lightness) I set saturation to 0 to convert to black & white. Remember that the IR images have some color content as they come from the camera.

For this shot of the same barn I tweaked quite a bit: highlight recovery strong, black point 99, local contrast 43, then in color mode I chose the sepia gold toning with medium-high contrast and grain 0.

Finally, for this shot of the Jenne farm house and barn, I used color mode b&w, high contrast and daylight white balance. Note that without the b&w conversion, daylight white balance produces a major red cast as one would expect of a color IR image.